Another school year is drawing to a close. If you have young children, you might be planning for their summer activities. But you also might want to look even farther into the future — to the day when your kids say “goodbye” to their local schools and “hello” to their college dormitories. When that day arrives, will you be financially prepared to pay for the high costs of higher education?

Consider this: For the 2013–2014 academic year, the average cost (tuition, fees, room and board) was $18,391 for an in-state student at a four-year public college or university, and $40,917 for a private school, according to the College Board. And these costs may well be considerably higher by the time your children enter college.

Of course, these are just the “sticker” prices; some families pay less, thanks to grants and tax benefits, such as the American Opportunity Tax Credit and the Lifetime Learning Tax Credit. Still, you may encounter some hefty college bills down the road.

But college is still a good investment in your child’s future. Over an adult’s working life, an individual with a bachelor’s degree can expect to earn, on average, nearly $1 million more than someone with only a high school diploma, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. So you’re saving for a good cause.

Unfortunately, you may not be saving enough — or you might not be making the most of your savings. To save for college, more parents use a general savings account than any other method, according to Sallie Mae’s How America Saves for College 2014 study. These types of accounts carry two significant drawbacks: They typically earn tiny returns and they offer no tax advantages.

If you're one of the "millennials" — the generation that began in the early 1980s — you are still in the early stages of your career. Retirement must seem like a long way off — yet, it's never too soon to start planning for it. At the same time, though, you may also have shorter-term goals.

Like everyone else, you have financial goals. To help achieve these goals, you may need to invest — and when you invest, you'll need to take on some risk. But the more you understand this risk, and the better you are at managing it, the greater your potential for staying invested for the long term.